HALLIE EPHRON: It's with the greatest pleasure that I welcome Liz Milliron, a regular presence here on Jungle Red Writers. (I feel a special affinity for Liz since we both from writing (very exciting) technical material to writing crime novels.)
Liz's stories about where she gets her ideas are astounding. We should all have such colorful relatives!
Welcome, Liz!
LIZ MILLIRON: Thanks for hosting me today, Hallie. It’s always fun visiting the “front side” of the blog.
You may be surprised to learn, reader, that I’m in the family way.
No, not like that. I’m way past my childbearing age, at least psychologically speaking. I’m talking in my fiction. Let me explain.
When I sat down to write Thicker Than Water, the sixth in the Laurel Highlands Mysteries and which came out last year, I made a deliberate decision to explore family dynamics.
It seemed a natural point at which to do so. Jim and Sally were taking their relationship to a deeper level. Once a couple does that, discussion about family comes up. In that book I wanted to explore what makes a family, feelings toward family, the various definitions and types of families, and chosen vs. biological family.
Then came The Secrets We Keep.
In this book, Betty is hired by a soldier home on medical leave. He was raised in an orphanage and was always told he was left in the church. He grew up satisfied with the story, but his brush with death has made him determined to find his biological mother. Of course secrets – and murder – are involved, leading Betty to think about the cost of exposing long-held family truths. Not only that, Betty has to deal with her feelings about her fiancé – and the handsome new man in her life who is definitely interested in more than friendship.
Currently, I’m working on The Lies We Live, the sixth Homefront Mystery, and family secrets and relationship issues again take center stage. Betty’s client is concerned for her brother and Betty has to face her fiancé when he returns from the war, discharged because of an injury.
This intrigued me. I looked at my past books, especially the historicals. The Enemy We Don’t Know explored the relationship between cousins and how it affected the crime. The Stories We Tell involved a character’s grandmother and her potential connections, previously unknown, with the Polish government in exile. The Lessons We Learn revolved around the death of a character’s father and the toll his hidden life took on his family. The Truth We Hide again touched on family dynamics, in this case the estrangement of the victim from his father.
Do you see a pattern here?
None, or very little, of this was planned. My own family history is pretty boring. No deep secrets, no infamous ancestors. My grandfather’s family was full of functioning alcoholics. They owned a bar, which seems to be a bad business model for a family of drinkers. I know my father’s Uncle Fran fell off a dock in Buffalo and drowned (a story I mined for Lessons, although Uncle Fran wasn’t murdered).
My grandfather always described his mother as a “mean old lady,” something my father seconded. There is the story of how she smuggled whiskey into the country from Canada by hiding the bottles in the door panels of her car. One night, the chief of police and the head of Customs at the Peace Bridge showed up at her door. They didn’t want to arrest her. They wanted a drink. (That story may be a tad apocryphal, I don’t know.) But that isn’t a secret.
I know a little about my paternal grandmother’s family. Her brother was a cop and a recovering alcoholic. Her sister-in-law drove a bus. They both told all the stories, though. I know a little more about my maternal grandmother’s family because my aunt has done extensive genealogical research, but she makes all of them sound like saints. Nothing is known about my maternal grandfather’s family. He was a small child when they immigrated from Croatia and he never talked about them.
Maybe it isn’t strange so many of my stories involve family secrets. With a family that doesn’t have secrets, at least that I know of, I want to submerse myself in those that do. Of course, maybe my family is awash in secrets. After all, if I knew about them, they wouldn’t be, well, secret, would they?
Real or fictional, all I know is it’s a great subject to play with. And since my real life is so devoid of secrecy, I guess I’ll continue to make them up.
Reds and readers, did your family have secrets? Were they ever uncovered and, if so, what happened?
***I’ve got three ARCs of The Secrets We Keep I’ll give to three commentators (US only – sorry).***
Liz Milliron is the author of The Laurel Highlands Mysteries series, set in the scenic Laurel Highlands and The Homefront Mysteries, set in Buffalo, NY during the early years of World War II. She is a co-host of the crime fiction podcast “Guns, Knives & Lipstick." Liz is a member of Pennwriters, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and The Historical Novel Society and is the current vice-President of the Pittsburgh chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Education Liaison for the National SinC board. Liz lives in Pittsburgh with her son and a very spoiled retired-racer greyhound.
About Secrets We Keep: June, 1943 Betty Ahern isn’t a novice PI anymore. After solving several dangerous cases, she is hired for what she hopes will be simpler one. A soldier home from Europe on medical furlough wants her to find his birth mother. Left at a church and raised an orphan at Father Baker’s Home for Boys, his only clue is a silver St. Christopher medal with a French inscription on the back.
Betty tracks down the unmarried daughter of a wealthy businessman who mysteriously vanished from society for several months in the early 1920s. Against her better judgment, Betty tells her client, who rushes off to meet her. But when the woman is found murdered, and her client is arrested for the crime, Betty must switch from locating a missing mother to clearing his name.
Aided by some new partners, Betty once again delves into the secrets of Buffalo’s elite. What she finds threatens to rip open secrets long buried. Can she find a killer and reunite a family? Or will the hunt cost Betty and her client everything, including their lives?
In this book, Betty is hired by a soldier home on medical leave. He was raised in an orphanage and was always told he was left in the church. He grew up satisfied with the story, but his brush with death has made him determined to find his biological mother. Of course secrets – and murder – are involved, leading Betty to think about the cost of exposing long-held family truths. Not only that, Betty has to deal with her feelings about her fiancé – and the handsome new man in her life who is definitely interested in more than friendship.
Currently, I’m working on The Lies We Live, the sixth Homefront Mystery, and family secrets and relationship issues again take center stage. Betty’s client is concerned for her brother and Betty has to face her fiancé when he returns from the war, discharged because of an injury.
This intrigued me. I looked at my past books, especially the historicals. The Enemy We Don’t Know explored the relationship between cousins and how it affected the crime. The Stories We Tell involved a character’s grandmother and her potential connections, previously unknown, with the Polish government in exile. The Lessons We Learn revolved around the death of a character’s father and the toll his hidden life took on his family. The Truth We Hide again touched on family dynamics, in this case the estrangement of the victim from his father.
Do you see a pattern here?
None, or very little, of this was planned. My own family history is pretty boring. No deep secrets, no infamous ancestors. My grandfather’s family was full of functioning alcoholics. They owned a bar, which seems to be a bad business model for a family of drinkers. I know my father’s Uncle Fran fell off a dock in Buffalo and drowned (a story I mined for Lessons, although Uncle Fran wasn’t murdered).
My grandfather always described his mother as a “mean old lady,” something my father seconded. There is the story of how she smuggled whiskey into the country from Canada by hiding the bottles in the door panels of her car. One night, the chief of police and the head of Customs at the Peace Bridge showed up at her door. They didn’t want to arrest her. They wanted a drink. (That story may be a tad apocryphal, I don’t know.) But that isn’t a secret.
I know a little about my paternal grandmother’s family. Her brother was a cop and a recovering alcoholic. Her sister-in-law drove a bus. They both told all the stories, though. I know a little more about my maternal grandmother’s family because my aunt has done extensive genealogical research, but she makes all of them sound like saints. Nothing is known about my maternal grandfather’s family. He was a small child when they immigrated from Croatia and he never talked about them.
Maybe it isn’t strange so many of my stories involve family secrets. With a family that doesn’t have secrets, at least that I know of, I want to submerse myself in those that do. Of course, maybe my family is awash in secrets. After all, if I knew about them, they wouldn’t be, well, secret, would they?
Real or fictional, all I know is it’s a great subject to play with. And since my real life is so devoid of secrecy, I guess I’ll continue to make them up.
Reds and readers, did your family have secrets? Were they ever uncovered and, if so, what happened?
***I’ve got three ARCs of The Secrets We Keep I’ll give to three commentators (US only – sorry).***
Liz Milliron is the author of The Laurel Highlands Mysteries series, set in the scenic Laurel Highlands and The Homefront Mysteries, set in Buffalo, NY during the early years of World War II. She is a co-host of the crime fiction podcast “Guns, Knives & Lipstick." Liz is a member of Pennwriters, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and The Historical Novel Society and is the current vice-President of the Pittsburgh chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Education Liaison for the National SinC board. Liz lives in Pittsburgh with her son and a very spoiled retired-racer greyhound.
About Secrets We Keep: June, 1943 Betty Ahern isn’t a novice PI anymore. After solving several dangerous cases, she is hired for what she hopes will be simpler one. A soldier home from Europe on medical furlough wants her to find his birth mother. Left at a church and raised an orphan at Father Baker’s Home for Boys, his only clue is a silver St. Christopher medal with a French inscription on the back.
Betty tracks down the unmarried daughter of a wealthy businessman who mysteriously vanished from society for several months in the early 1920s. Against her better judgment, Betty tells her client, who rushes off to meet her. But when the woman is found murdered, and her client is arrested for the crime, Betty must switch from locating a missing mother to clearing his name.
Aided by some new partners, Betty once again delves into the secrets of Buffalo’s elite. What she finds threatens to rip open secrets long buried. Can she find a killer and reunite a family? Or will the hunt cost Betty and her client everything, including their lives?
This is fascinating, Liz . . . family secrets make intriguing story-telling and captivating reading. But, as far as I know, we have no family secrets waiting to be revealed. I’m looking forward to discovering how it all works out in “The Secrets We Keep” . . . .
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joan. I don't know whether to feel lucky or bereft that I don't have a family with secrets.
DeleteI come from a family of writers so all my "family secrets" have already been blabbed.
DeleteThanks. I did discover a family *secret* when I was doing the genealogy thing. I haven't told anyone yet, perhaps one day I will. *it was something that was done during that era to protect family*
ReplyDeleteOoo. If you ever do, I'll be dying to hear!
Deleteoh Dru, you're teasing us!!
DeleteWow! (I have a very dear friend who discovered through genetic results that she and her sisters were just half siblings. BIG surprise.
DeleteCongratulations, Liz! On my mom's side, there were a number of bullheaded Irish relatives who didn't speak to one another (including a pair of twin brothers), and my brother unwisely continued the trend, but that's no secret.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that my little grandmother Ruth could shoot was never talked about, but I have photo evidence. Maybe my mom just didn't know.
Ah. Bull-headed Irish relatives. The Hubby's family is full of them. Me, we've got bull-headed Germans. LOL
DeleteI bet Ruth had a lot of skills no one knew about if she could shoot.
Liz, congratulations. I think that many successful series are buoyed by family lore, secrets kept and secrets uncovered. I can think of several authors, Reds included, whose long-running series depend on family to show the humanity of their protagonists.
ReplyDeleteBoth of your series have been on my radar for a long time. I am looking for book #1 in each of them today.
Thanks so much, Judy. I hope you enjoy.
DeleteFamily secrets have the benefit of all that emotionally-charged baggage. How does it affect the ones you love and why did the person hide it for so long? Wonderful stuff for fiction.
My novels are full of family secrets. Genetic testing introduced all sorts of oportunities to uncover them.
DeleteLiz - nice to see you on the front side this morning! No secrets -- that I know of -- in my family, but it sure is fun to read about the ones writers like you make up!
ReplyDeleteHi, Amanda! I am happy to provide some fictional family secrets for your entertainment.
DeleteHi, Liz! Family secrets? Oh, heck yeah. I've mined a few from my maternal side already. I haven't really dived into my father's side, although I know there were a few deep grudges that were carried to the grave. Hmmm. Maybe I should do more digging on Ancestry.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, you know how much I love The Secrets We Keep! Congrats again!
Thank you, Annette! That's the thing about not knowing much about my maternal grandfather's Croatian family. They would have come to the US in the mid-1920s, so I can only wonder what kind of secrets they left behind - or brought with them, for that matter.
DeleteIt's so important to ASK questions before your relatives depart this earthly realm. Of course take the answers with a few grains of salt. I waited too long to talk to my uncle so her sister/my mom remains a huge mystery.
DeleteLIZ: Great to see you on the front side of JRW today! Both my parents & grandparents were tight-lipped about their past. All I heard was that growing up in WWII (and post-war) Japan was pretty grim.
ReplyDeleteOh, Grace, I can only imagine. There was probably a lot about Japan during and after the war that was simply too painful to talk about.
DeleteI'm sure there are stories there to be told... painful to revisit.
DeleteCongratulations, Liz! Oh, family
ReplyDeletesecrets… Well, I fear they are still secret from me ….hmmm. There must be SOMETHING…
Hank, I feel the same. No family can be that vanilla, right? With alcoholics on one side and Croatian immigrants on the other, there must be SOMETHING.
DeleteLiz, you've been busy! I hadn't realized this series already includes six books. I need to catch up. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteMy youngest daughter has been doing a lot of genealogy on both sides of our family, and has uncovered a couple interesting tidbits. My maternal great grandmother on my grandfather's side, who we always thought had German or Swiss heritage, turns out to have been a Daughter of the American Revolution, which YD has traced back to the early 1600's in England. My maternal great grandmother on my grandmother's side turns out to have been a bigamist, we think, because the great grandfather thought to have died in an accident in 1912 or 1914 actually lived to 1957, after having been in prison for some years. And GGM's second husband was a great deal younger than she, some 14 years, and he didn't pass away until I was a year or two old. Which means both her husbands lived into the 1950's. We still don't know all the details of this juicy situation. On the other hand, the family lore of having Native American heritage turns out to be someone's fantasy. Nary a drop.
Wow! Now there's some interesting family history. My sister got the geneology bug one night and managed to trace my father's family all the way back to some landed gentry in England. She thinks one migh have come on the Mayflower. She also did one of those genetic tests that said she was 17% Scandinavian. That was a bolt out of nowhere. German, English, and Slavic we knew about, but Scandinavian? No clue where that came from.
DeleteWe had similar results. Except our family heritage included Scottish, which was a huge surprise.
DeleteKaren,that is SO fascinating!
DeleteHi Liz! I must tell you that I absolutely LOVE the Homefront series; each book is better than the one before it so I can't wait to read The Lives We Live, whenever that one comes out. And one of these days I promise to start reading the Laurel Highlands Mysteries.
ReplyDeleteAs for family secrets, I am not really sure. Working on my family tree I found some interesting things that were previously unknown to me, but that doesn't necessarily make them secrets. On each side of my family there is at least one "mystery" and I'm not sure if they can ever be solved. If I could ever solve them anyway. My mother's grandfather died of diphtheria in the Philippines in 1902, where he was teaching. Eye witness accounts tell of him being buried there. My great grandmother continued living there, with her young children so she could complete his contract. But some family members say he was buried here locally. The cemetery superintendent told me that there is a grave and that a burial took places several years after the death of the man. For what it is worth, my great grandmother never remarried but returned home to her mother, a few hours away, where she was buried in 1949.
The other mystery involves the question of who is my fathers great grandmother. All of the records I find say it was one person, but DNA tells me that that woman was in fact his great aunt! Interesting to say the least.
Aw, thanks Judi! I'm glad you like the series.
DeleteI think you've got some serious mysteries there, especially around your father's great-grandmother. There's something there for sure.
Ooh, that's a novel!
DeleteLiz, I don't think you can describe your family as boring! They are chockablock with stories. So glad you are using them. Families are fascinating...congrats on the new book!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lucy. Maybe boring is the wrong word? It's just that all the stories are out there, so nothing teasing me from the shadows. Because as a writer, you know our imaginations love to play "what if" with things like those.
DeleteBut families are always fascinating, I guess. Very little affects you more than the people you grew up with - or so I think.
Maybe boring is the wrong word. But there doesn't seem to be anything teasing me from the shadows in my family - and we all know how writer imaginations love to be teased!
DeleteBlogger is eating my comments. Hopefully this doesn't show up for a third time.
DeleteMaybe boring is the wrong word. But nothing teases me from the shadows - and we all know how writer imaginations love to be teased!
Congrats on your latest release! I learn the family secrets of others by reading Carolyn Hax in the Washington Post.
ReplyDeleteChecking up on other people's family secrets is always fun, isn't it?
DeleteWe love to watch Finding Your Roots by Dr. Henry Louis Gates. It is so fascinating to learn about well known people and their family backstories. There were many surprises when people learned that father/grandfathers/or mothers, etc where not related. Sometimes they are able through DNA testing to find who the real family member came from. It is also interesting that many guests on the show match DNA with other well know people. For example, Meryl Streep shares DNA with Mike Nichols (director), Evaa Longoria, and Steven Colbert!
ReplyDeleteDNA has been an amazing tool to accurately answer so many question families might have.
Oh, it has, hasn't it? I would imagine that sometimes it can set off quite a stir!
DeleteOkay, Liz, here is something fun: About 5 years ago a man found my brother to be his biological father through DNA testing. My brother was a science fiction reader for his whole life. The man is a sci fi author!
ReplyDeleteThere's so much more to that story, but no secrets.
Judy, that is so cool! Do they still talk to each other?
DeleteJudy, that makes you wonder doesn't it about nuture vs nature. You said there is more to his story I bet it is interesting.
DeleteSO FASCINATING!!
DeleteYour post and your background sounds extremely interesting. What great stories to tell. Congratulations on your book. All of your novels are extraordinary and captivating. I know my background but find the DNA aspect intriguing and well worth exploring.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Someday maybe I'll do the DNA thing. Part of me is a little afraid of what I'd discover.
DeleteLiz, both my husband and I did the DNA Ancestry test and it just tell told us where our ancestors originally came from and what percentage you have. For example, I am 99% English, Scottish, Irish and my husband is 98% Askenasic (sp) Jewish from various Jewish areas throughout eastern Europe and surprisingly 1% Native Norwegian ... go figure!
DeleteLiz, welcome to JRW front side of the blog and congratulations on your new novel! Family secrets often are in Mystery novels. There is a long running series about Sebastian St. Cyr ( I forgot the author's name) and his journey to finding out who his biological father is.
ReplyDeleteThinking about your character who wants to find his biological mother - is your story set today or many years ago? I asked because these days, you can get a DNA test and there are better chances of finding out who your biological family is.
Family secrets? I cannot think of any off the top of my head right now.
Diana
Diana, the story is set in 1943. No DNA help then. Just a gumshoe digging into what she can find. Sometimes not having access to modern science makes a historical a pain, but in this case I'm glad science can't provide the answer. More fun for me!
DeleteThe book description shows that it takes place during the years of WWII.. The book description is included in this blog.
DeleteLiz, thank you. Diana
DeleteLiz, I’m a fellow Pennsylvanian from Harrisburg so feel connected to you geographically! Re: family lore, my birth family is from Michigan and there was always a family story about my great Uncle Bert smuggling booze from Canada during the Prohibition era. His “respectable” business was operating a small grocery/gas station but apparently he supported the local family with the profits from his smuggling.~Emily Dame
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about it until I read your story Emily Dame about your Uncle Bert being a bootlegger! My paternal grandfather (who I unfortunately never met) was a doctor and during prohibition he used to get calls from bootleggers up in the hills for medical care. So he'd let my dad (who was very young at the time) ride up in the horse drawn carriage into the hills of Mississippi to administer to them. Apparently my dad thought this was very exciting.
DeleteEmily - waving to you from Pittsbugh! I would not be surprised if the story about Uncle Bert was true. I think many people took advantage of proximity to the Candian border to supplement their legal income during Prohibition.
DeleteThe big family secret we found out after both my maternal grandparents had passed away was that Grandpa Louis hadn't been married ONCE before meeting Grandma Mary - he had been married TWICE. We knew his "first wife" had died in childbirth, and that Mary's parents disapproved of the age gap between them; Louis was ten years older than she. What we didn't know - and what Grandma never knew - was that he had been married another time, and THAT wife also died, along with her twin girls, Lila and Lois. You can imagine why he didn't reveal that - he must have felt like a walking death curse.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, he and Mary went on to have five healthy children, four girls and a boy. The name of his second and fourth daughters?
Lila and Lois.
Yikes! What a story Julia. That would make a good mystery novel wouldn't it. Were the deaths natural or .... (scary music) something more sinister. (Not that it was the case with your grandpa).
DeleteWow! Imagine finding that out if you were Lila and Lois! It was so much easier to hide things like that before all the DNA testing and things, wasn't it? Although I gotta say - Grandpa Louis was a man who could keep a secret, wasn't he?
DeleteJulia, that story reminds me of a conversation I had with an acquaintance several years ago. I did not know at the time that her mother had been a Holocaust survivor. She told me learned from an aunt, after her mother's death, that her mother had had another family that had been wiped out in the concentration camps. Her mother never told her!
DeleteHi Liz, so good to see you here! Families - yep, secrets abound. Especially my grandfather. He came here from Germany before the turn of the century at the age of 16, changed his name, and would only say that we came from good stock. With the advent of the Internet and Ancestor.com- I researched. He was a minor royal, had gotten a married lady of quality in a family way, was literally ridden out of town at gunpoint and dumped at the dock with a first class ticket. Wouldn't want to go into infamy in second class, would we. When he got to the US , he headed for Wyoming to become a cowboy. Don't ask. His wife died during a major windstorm. The ladies of the town took his child away (still looking for that trail) and he returned to NY with the intention to leave the country. Enter my grandmother. He stayed, and no one in the family every said a word about any of this. That cowboy thing? My dad was born over a lumberyard stable in Yonkers, NY. In 1917 horses were heavy transport and my granddad was the teamster who cared for the horses.
ReplyDeleteThat is fascinating, Kait. So many of us dream of being connected to a European royal family and for you it's true! And yes. By all means send the young man into infamy - but in first class, please. There are standards to maintain. LOL
DeleteWow, what a story, Kait!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis wasn't a family secret but my grandfather was a doctor and they lived in a respectable home in Vicksburg, Miss. Every so often a runner would be sent by the head bootlegger from up in the hills of Mississippi asking for medical help for this or that. This was during prohibition and the calls came usually in the middle of the dark night. My grandfather would let my dad (who was fairly young at the time) ride along. My dad recalls this as a very exciting adventure. I can imagine!
ReplyDeleteMidnight adventure! What boy wouldn't love that?
DeleteIt is interesting to see themes emerge in writer's works. Sometimes, it is obvious something an author likes to explore. But sometimes, it is much more subtle. Including to them, apparently. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I may have reacted to the teaser for the next Homefront Mystery. I have to wait HOW long to see how that plays out?
(No need to enter me in the giveaway since I've already enjoyed THE SECRETS WE KEEP.)
I am definitely one of those authors who looks back and says, "Oh, that's a theme? Who knew." LOL
DeleteSorry Mark. You'll have to wait until February 2025 for THE LIES WE LIVE. I'm still writing it!
Liz, always so great to see you here on the front end! I think all stories end up being about family in one way or another, don't you? Whether we love or hate them, have them or don't have them... There's so much I don't know about mine--neither parent really liked to talk about them. I do know that my dad's mother died when he was young and that he didn't like his father, or any of his siblings except for his youngest sister. He only took me to meet my grandfather once, when he (grandfather) was in his nineties, and all I remember is a rather frightening old white haired man in a rocker on a porch, and now the whole story is probably embroidered by my imagination.
ReplyDeleteDebs, you're right. Families are fraught with stories. I was fortunate that I - and my parents - mostly got along with their families, including in-laws (although my dad told some stories about his father-in-law after he'd had a case of beer that were very interesting - and not very complimentary to my dad). But even then, there is that one person. Like my one brother. It's not that we don't get along - but we don't talk often. My brother likes things his way and he definitely has a tendency to write revisionist family history.
DeleteHi Liz! Very fun to see you on the other side of the blog.
ReplyDeleteI always heard that my father’s family name (Smith) was not really their name. The family lore said someone in the past had done something on the wrong side of the law and had changed their name to be able to hide/get away. I always thought he was a horse thief or something like that. Along comes Ancestry and my forebears were Smiths as far back as I have been able to search.
And DNA has changed my mother’s German heritage from 50%, as I had imagined, down to about 20%. It’s been replaced by a mix of Northern European countries (a little bit of English, some Scottish and Irish, some Norwegian and some from Baltic countries).
Fascinating subject, Liz! — Pat S
Pat - Ancestry.com and DNA have done more to disrupt family folklore than anything, haven't they? And really, with a name like Smith, it begs you to think someone changed the name to evade the law doesn't it?
DeleteFun to find a new to me series - and based in Buffalo, where I still have family mysteries! In fact, those folks led my on a 20 year genealogy jag, finding indictments, shootings, opium wars, cheaters, suicides, pioneers and more! Wonder if Betty knew my Mildred?
ReplyDeleteBuffalo had a more colorful past than many realize. And if Mildred was alive in 1943, she very well might have!
DeleteIf my family had any secrets, I'm not likely to find out now that most are gone. We had some quirky stuff like my aunts having kids on the same day who both ended up living in Rockville, Maryland for a while. My mom's sister married a man whose brother married my dad's cousin. Your story sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sally. I love when those little quirks crop up. It's the kind of stuff you can't write in fiction because nobody would believe it - but it happens all the time in real life.
DeleteThere were stories not told to us kids probably because we'd blab. Or because my parents didn't want to say negative things about family to us kids. Because we'd blab. One of Dad's brothers had a son, only child, who was alternately spoiled and criticized. He married a really nice woman and had several children. One day he vanished. His family never heard from him again. Years later, either he or his wife applied for social security and everything hit the fan. Turned out he'd moved to California, married, and had another family. He abandoned his second family by killing himself. No explanations.
ReplyDeletePat, wow! Now that's a story!
DeleteInteresting how family dynamics always come into play. As for secrets in our family, if there are any, they are hiding it well.
ReplyDeleteCherie - families are a thing we can't escape even when we try. At least that's what I think. My family is like yours. If there are secrets, they are well hidden.
Delete